The Gmail app will now create AI summaries whether you want them or not
Using Google products in 2025 means using (or avoiding) AI features, which are becoming a core part of the experience across the board. Last year, Gmail gained the ability to summarize emails on demand. Now, Google says AI summaries will be generated and displayed automatically in the Gmail app for Android and iOS.
Before this latest change, you had to tap the "Summarize this email" chip at the top of the screen to generate an AI summary of the message contents. Google has decided to make this automatic for emails "where a summary is helpful." That means messages that are longer or threads that contain multiple replies. The announcement is a bit vague about how much detail will trigger a summary, but it probably won't take much, as Google wants people interacting with AI features as much as possible.
Gmail's AI summaries use Gemini to generate a brief list of bullet points that break down the content of the thread. It appears at the top of the app, which may not be ideal. In the same way that AI Overviews appear at the top of search results and push the actual search results farther out of reach, Gmail's AI summaries take up valuable real estate at the top of the screen.